Brahmastra Review. A Spectacle or a disaster?

10 Years in the making, Brahmastra has opened to extremely polarising reviews. Some people absolutely trashing it and others just showering it with praises. The truth, let me tell you, is that Brahmastra as a movie is somewhere in between. We rarely get to see films from the fantasy genre in our country. Especially ones of such a massive budget and scale. With Boycott campaigns for stupid things, when someone attempts one, why will people make such stuff? Then the same person who helped trend the hashtag will tweet, “Yaar, ye Bollywood wale Hollywood wali level ki movies kyu nahi banate?”. The movie is not perfect though. As promised, I will call spade a spade, but we will get to that.

Brahamastra begins with a banger with an action packed scene with a special appearance from an actor. If you are planning on watching the film, I am warning you, DO NOT BE LATE. Then the actual plot begins with Shiva (Ranbir Kapoor) visiting a temple (the controversial shoes scene being cropped out) and falling in love with Isha (Alia Bhatt). No I am not exaggerating for effect, it happens THAT FAST (Ok, I am exaggerating for effect, but not too much). But seriously, everything happens really fast, no real chance for character development. Shiva starts getting visions that he doesn’t understand. I will definitely praise the BGM though and the Sanskrit verses used were beautiful, This is not the first time that Sanskrit verses have been used for background score, but this has to be the best implementation I have seen, or heard rather. Shiva and Isha go to Varanasi for a super important mission, but as soon as they reach Varanasi, they start vibing to Kesariyaan. The Album is Beautiful. No doubt about it (well, Dance ka bhoot is debatable). But THEY JUST DON’T FIT! All songs feel just as placeholders that were not required. This is supposed to be a fantasy film, and it is , but all that focus on the romance just doesn’t work. Ranbir Kapoor just works as Shiva but cant say the same for Alia Bhatt as Isha. It was a very mixed bag of a performance. Shining in places but cringeworthy in others. The script was written in the early 2010’s and the trash dialogues and the average screenplay of the movie reflect that. I can write this without any doubt that this is the best VFX that Hindi cinema has offered till now. Namit Malhotra, The Man Behind The Breathtaking VFX of Brahmastra.( Among many, he is known for his work in movies like Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), and Tenet (2020).), deserves the praise.

Now all fantasy films are derivative and Brahmastra is no different. From the star wars universe we get a Luke Skywalker-Darth Vader angle. From the matrix universe we get love is the greatest superpower angle. From the x-men universe we get a school or an ashram here where a mentor presides over a group of people with a diverse set of superpowers and so on and so forth .The trick is not to make us forget these references, the trick is to make us say oh wow look at how they took all these bits and pieces from other fantasy universes and look how they did their own thing.It is not what you are taking from elsewhere it is what you are adding to what you are taking from elsewhere. It is how you are building your own world your own universe. And Brahmastra achieves that to a certain extent. The world building is incredible and sets up the upcoming movies brilliantly. I have questions that I NEED answers to, NOW.

Ratings:

1)World Building: 3.5/5

2)Character Development:2/5

3)Story:3/5

4)Visuals: 5/5

5)Writing/Dialogues: 1/5

Keetabi Keeda Rating: 3/5